Great post Rand, however what if I offer a very specific business service and want to target cities where I don't have a physical presence? To meet the intent of a "<service>+<city>" type search I have no choice but to provide info on competitors in that city that actually have a physical presence. This might be beyond the pale for some!

Great article Cyrus. It really underlines just how tricky the disavow tool has made things and how little information Google has given us. We've also seen that it's the effort Google sees you putting in that is really the key to being successfully reconsidered. If you get one bad link removed out of 100 before asking for reconsideration, then you're probably going nowhere. But if you've removed a decent proportion of them ("decent proportion" - that's the million-dollar question!) then we've found a reconsideration is much more likely to be taken seriously.Keep on truckin'.